This was the case of Casey Foster, the Director of the Transportation wing at the Birmingham City Schools. He needed more data to regulate the safety of their fleet services for about 20,000 students.
Foster understood that he needed a fleet managing solution to monitor the vehicle locations, fuel usage, and driver behavior across his yellow and white fleet, to surmount his fleet management challenges.
He availed the benefits of a fleet software to overcome the challenges in his fleet. The results?
Better safety. Better drivers. Better maintenance. Better Performance.
With real-time tracking, Foster is now able to track drivers who adhere to the rules and those who don’t. This way, he marks out the safety score for individual drivers.
Then with driving training, both pre-recruitment and post-accident, Foster can cut back on harsh drivers. And, it’s notable that as of February 2020, Foster’s fleet has driven over 119,500 miles since the last preventable road accident.
As for his fleet maintenance, Foster’s team initially used the state-issued logbooks. This process consumed colossal time and hampered productivity.
But now, Foster’s team uses Electronic DVIRs to stop the to and fro communications between the drivers and the maintenance workshops. So his drivers are spending more time driving and less time in maintenance shops.
Now, if Foster was able to overcome his fleet challenges, so can you. You are going to be enlightened on some of the common challenges you face in your fleet with ideal courses of action to overcome them.
Let’s dive in!
The List Of Challenges & Solutions That Fleet Managers Face
Let us try and divide the challenges into three broad sections, namely: Administrative tasks, fuel efficiency, fleet management, ETA management. Now, let us understand these challenges and how to overcome them in further detail:
1. Administrative Tasks
According to research, 49% of fleet managers assert that a team member spends anywhere between one and a half to two hours, quoting and invoicing. Further, the word from 43% asserts that another 1.5 to 2 hours are spent in expense management, 42% on identifying workers to dispatch a job, and 40% on customer intimations.
Phew!
Added to all this, imagine your team members sifting through piles of paperwork for the tasks. Do you think your team would get the figures, right?
Maybe, to an extent, but messing things up midway.
Ever heard of automation? Sure you would have, but maybe, you never thought of its potentiality in rescuing you, right?
This automation is a part of Fleet Management System, that automatizes your dialogues between your workforce and fleet drivers. Further, all your invoicing, billing, and quoting tasks will be taken care of, in addition to routing and scheduling your deliveries.
And what’s more, you can manage your operations like a pro, by automated reminders and notifications of impending tasks and vehicle maintenance checks.
2. Fuel Inefficiency
Imagine a scenario where your fleet drivers misuse the vehicle on work to run their personal errands.
And what’s worse than you not being able to catch them in the act?
Or consider this, for instance. Your driver misses the route that he goes on a roundabout to reach the destination. Does that sound nice?
He not only misses a delivery or a pick-up but also wastes fuel in the run.
However, with a Fleet Management System, you would be able to track the routes of your drivers in real-time to monitor how much time they spend idling and running their chores with the work vehicle.
Since fuel prices keep fluctuating depending on the area of your service and the routes are taken, a GPS based solution will help you in demarcating the miles your drivers would have to drive for a job.
Further, based on the data you collect, you can plan for alternative better battery charging stops.
This is a nice save of your expenditures on your fuel consumption.
3. Fleet Maintenance
For a case in point, imagine that you own an ice cream delivery fleet. Now, visualize a scenario where your delivery truck breaks down. Oh, what a waste would those ice creams be!
Into the bargain, you could miss the delivery and get your consumer rapport severed.
Certainly, it’s not pleasant to land in such circumstances. And the only ideal course of action to prevent such mishaps from making historical setbacks in your fleet business is to keep up regular maintenance checks.
Unfortunately, this is no piece of cake when done manually. Yet, like always, technology comes to your rescue!
You can simply automate your fleet maintenance schedules. This fleet maintenance solution sends reminders for the next maintenance service check, taking into account the mileage and duration of vehicle utilization.
Besides this, you can also make use of digital solutions that monitor signs of malfunction in your fleet vehicles. This way, an immediate notification is sent to you to schedule a check.
The catch, you’d know an impending break down ahead of time, to replace faulty vehicles with well-functioning ones, and make your deliveries successfully.
4. ETA Management
How many times has your team missed the estimated time of arrival?
Plenty, mayhap?
A research report claims that almost 60% of the fleet managers face this pain-point. And as a result, many fleet managers have to spend additional time calling up their consumers to update the revised ETA.
Now, that’s not a nice business approach, is it?
Here’s where digitization comes in handy. Integrated with GPS, this solution would monitor the traffic to predict infallible ETAs. The best part of this tool is that all tracking is done in real-time, so it offers you better accuracy.
So, just strap a digitization solution for your fleet management activities, you would no longer have to cower before your customer in shame for another ETA breach.
Over to You
True, you have several fleet management challenges. But now, you have the solutions too!
With Fleet Management Software, you can automate all your mundane tasks, track drivers, improve your fleet’s safety. You should no longer say that you have big fleet management problems.
Raise your chin and say that you have bigger fleet management solutions!